If a conductor dropped dead in the middle of a symphony...

August 26, 2019 1:38 AM

...could the orchestra a) finish the piece of music, while b) continuing to sound like a professional orchestra? If not, why not?
posted by BadgerDoctor to Media & Arts (31 answers total)

Yes, they certainly could. But members of a professional orchestra are also humans, and I’m quite sure that they would collectively acknowledge a medical emergency.
posted by Juniper Toast at 2:33 AM on August 26, 2019 [33 favorites]

I assume the macabre scenario is just a way to ask if an orchestra could perform without a conductor in front of them. See Conductorless_orchestra.
posted by Gyan at 3:14 AM on August 26, 2019 [5 favorites]

I read a fascinating article about this long ago, wherein the same orchestra played the same pieces with and without their conductor, as a way to determine if and how a conductor affects the final product. It may have been this one. The upshot relative to your question probably comes down to one's interpretation of "professional". They sounded better with a conductor, anyway. But they held it together quite well without.
posted by dbx at 3:29 AM on August 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

On preview that was very much not the article I read. I'll keep looking.
posted by dbx at 3:30 AM on August 26, 2019

Can we say the conductor was abducted by aliens instead? That seems a little more humane. In that case, yes, they most likely could.
A professional orchestra playing a piece from the standard classical repertoire would probably have a good chance of finishing the piece successfully even with their eyes closed, having all played it a zillion times already. Most likely the concertmaster/concertmistress would give the lead as needed, which to some extent he or she does anyway.
If they were playing Mahler or similar ultra-large ensemble work it would be somewhat more difficult, and considerably more so in the case of an ultra-weird modern piece with a lot of tempo changes; the degree of professional success would probably depend on how much rehearsal time there had been.
posted by huimangm at 3:35 AM on August 26, 2019 [5 favorites]

Most of the conductor's work is done in the rehearsals. That work is a lot like the director of a stage play: helping the the various performers balance and coordinate their parts, making sure that things work well in the performance space, thinking about the overarching arc of the piece and what aspects to emphasize, etc.

Theatrical directors are, of course, not usually on stage during a performance, and while plays do sometimes go off the rails in performance, the performers can usually muddle through. In an orchestral performance, the larger number of performers make it harder for everyone to get "back on track" should there be a problem. For professional musicians, the chances of getting "off track" in the first place are minimal, but they do increase with the complexity of the piece and the size of the ensemble.

All of which is to say that for a relatively simple piece, the performance can be (and sometimes is!) done without a conductor. But even for a professional orchestra, there's a small chance that things could really fall apart if they tried to perform a "western art music" piece from after about 1900 or so.
posted by Johnny Assay at 4:33 AM on August 26, 2019 [8 favorites]

Yeah. My high school band could have done it if it was a piece we had played a lot. At that point it's muscle memory.
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 4:34 AM on August 26, 2019 [5 favorites]

In most good professional situations a lot of the value of a conductor is as "music director," where most of the activity is shaping the collective goals of the group during rehearsals. After that, at the performances, the role of the conductor is closer to 90% cheerleader, 9% traffic cop, 1% resolver of mishaps. (With some extremely good orchestras and conductors this all happens at once, with zero rehearsals, for paying customers, but that's a little rare and usually limited to standard repertoire.)

But in the absence of a conductor most good orchestras can step up and lead themselves through just about anything. Long ago I was principal trumpet of an orchestra that was playing Mahler's 5th Symphony with a guest conductor who was almost comically not up to the challenge of leading us through all the hairpin rubatos, etc., and we were being led into trainwreck after trainwreck. Halfway through the first rehearsal I grabbed the concertmaster, we figured out a plan (not complicated: you take the front, I'll take the back, I'll watch you like I'm playing second stand violin) and we made it through the rest of the cycle like the biggest string quartet ever.
posted by range at 4:37 AM on August 26, 2019 [27 favorites]

Yes. The concert master (first violin) could provide cues if necessary.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:48 AM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

And absolutely agreed with everything spitbull says. A lot of the "seasoning" on the path from rookie to veteran pro player is learning when, and how, to put the conductor in one of three boxes:

1) you should follow this conductor
2) you should make this conductor *feel* like they are being followed while you fix a bunch of things for them
3) outright mutiny

This is really no different from any other job and anybody familiar with a normal business environment will of course recognize the overwhelming, depressing frequency of mode #2, as one learns to manage the boss who was promoted to authority despite some big deficiencies. It's the most common mode, luckily followed by 1. #3 definitely happens but when it does, one of you probably isn't coming back for the next concert.
posted by range at 4:49 AM on August 26, 2019 [20 favorites]

I was in the Young Catholic Musicians (does what it says on the tin) in high school. Orchestra, Choir. The director/band leader was incredible at arrangements and voicing the instruments and voices but the guy was absolutely terrible at keeping a steady beat. Like, if we had followed him it would have been the sonic equivalent of that ocean pumice field over on the Blue. His tempos were sinusoidal.

The lead trumpet and I (lead clarinet) would always arrange so that we would be on opposite sides of the semi-circle surrounding the conductor. We would generally just lock eyes and nod gently at the correct tempo, and everyone knew to watch one or the other of us for the beat.

We were just semi-professional kids, rehearsing once a week if that. A professional orchestra? No sweat.
posted by notsnot at 5:17 AM on August 26, 2019 [7 favorites]

I'd also like to note that many conductors will have an assistant, one of the orchestra members, who is learning from them. That person could take over if said conductor fell ill during a performance.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 5:28 AM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

At its premiere, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was poorly received by the public, because Beethoven had conducted it, and Beethoven had gone deaf by then. The orchestra could probably have done a better job on their own.
posted by ubiquity at 5:54 AM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm a singer, not an instrumentalist. I've sung with a small vocal ensemble with no conductor - we just watched each other.

However in large polychoral pieces or where some choir members are positioned on the other side of the space, the speed of sound becomes an issue. The sound of the other group is slightly delayed so you rely on the conductor and not your ears to come in at the right place.

I assume that when members of an orchestra are performing from different positions in the venue, this would also be an issue, and without a conductor they'd have to rely on the concert master/mistress or other designated person.
posted by bunderful at 5:56 AM on August 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

Something you didn't ask -but which may be illuminating in this context - is "what would happen if the conductor did not drop dead - but just started conducting really poorly?"

In my understanding - that would probably cause more musical damage than the simple vanishing conductor case - it is more dangerous to faithfully follow a bad leader than to jointly acknowledge that nobody is in charge. The BBC released an interesting programme called "Maestro" a few years ago - in which they put various non classically trained celebs in front of a the BBC Concert Orchestra and looked at how they improved (or didn't). It is interesting viewing if you want to appreciate the effect that a bad conductor can have.
posted by rongorongo at 5:56 AM on August 26, 2019 [6 favorites]

Many years ago Andre Previn demonstrated this on TV. He started the orchestra and then sat down, pretending that ‘in a few minutes, they’ll just fall apart’. Of course, as he knew perfectly well they would, they finished the piece with no problems at all. Unfortunately I think this is too long ago to have got onto YouTube.
posted by Segundus at 5:59 AM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

This question has been sufficiently answered above, but I thought I’d chime in and say that if my community orchestra was conductor-less, our stoned viola section leader and the string bass section would never ever ever make their entrances. But I’m sure professionals could do it conductor-less no problem most of the time.

However, if our conductor dropped dead, I can tell you that I would be the only person in the whole place making the 911 call. Last year the basement we were practicing in started smelling like a natural gas leak, and 90% of the orchestra (plus conductor) would have played until their explosive doom. The French horn section and I were the only people initially willing to leave, I was the only one decisive enough to call 911, and the clarinet section still refused to leave after I told them that the 911 operator said everyone needed to evacuate. Stubborn sheep, all of them.
posted by Maarika at 6:23 AM on August 26, 2019 [8 favorites]

Chiming in that even a sufficiently advanced non-professional group could do this. My conductor for my youth orchestra frequently had us sit randomly around the room (apart from a central pod of the first stands of the violins, violas, and cellos) for the penultimate rehearsal before a concert and just...go. This included some fairly complex pieces with changing time signatures and tempi (e.g., The Chairman Dances by John Adams). And, in fact, the conductor for my local community band just pulled the same thing on us a few weeks back.
posted by damayanti at 6:51 AM on August 26, 2019

In 1992 the New York Philharmonic performed a concert celebrating their 150th anniversary which I saw in the US on PBS. The program included the signature piece of each of the orchestra's conductors/music directors, with the ones still living invited to conduct their own.

Leonard Bernstein (arguably their first US-born music director) , had passed away in 1990. The orchestra performed his overture from Candide without a conductor. It was amazing. And there are plenty of tempo changes and complex rhythms in that piece. (My recent MeFi Music Swap mix opened with a recording of that piece conducted by the composer - it's a really fun piece to listen to!)

So yes, skilled orchestras have the ability to play without a conductor.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 6:52 AM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

When I was in elementary school in the late 80's, I saw a children's concert at the philadelphia orchestra's academy of music in philadelphia. The conductor (not ricardo muti, it was the assistant conductor) collapsed on stage with a heart attack (he did not die).

The staff called for a doctor from the audience and the concert did not continue. On the way home, we heard about it on the news (Philadelphia's KYW - Newsradio with its ticker-tape background sound).

I don't know if the concert could have continued, but I have witnessed something very close to the scenario that you described and I can tell you what happened in this case (sample size one).
posted by jazh at 7:10 AM on August 26, 2019 [6 favorites]

A friend who was a local celebrity with childhood musical training had a chance to conduct the Cleveland Symphony at a fundraising event. He did his best, but he said that the orchestra basically followed the concert master (first violin).
posted by Winnie the Proust at 8:14 AM on August 26, 2019

I'm a violinist, and I'm currently the concertmaster of my community orchestra.

The orchestra could definitely finish and would sound great. Professional musicians have all kinds of ways of staying together through body language and watching section leaders, in addition to knowing the music very well and having rehearsed tempo changes previously.

Really awesome conductors can had that extra little something to the music and make it sound fabulous, but for experienced players, by concert time, they aren't very necessary. By experienced players I mean a group capable of playing standard symphonic repertoire. Really good youth orchestra, college students, etc.

If you removed the conductor from an average middle school orchestra, you could pretty much guarantee a trainwreck within 30 seconds though. Kids aren't good at counting and get lost frequently; they need cues. They also need reminders of the tempi and guidance to get through tempo changes or fast sections without either speeding up and getting out of control, or separating from other sections because theyr'e so busy trying to play the right notes they can't listen.
posted by Cygnet at 8:38 AM on August 26, 2019 [5 favorites]

I have sung in large choirs that stand behind and above the orchestra, on stage. I agree that the further apart the furthest performers are from each other is the trickiest part. Acoustics can be very weird on stage since the point of performance spaces is to get good sound out to the audience. In large groups the conductor is there because you can't always trust the tempo you think you're hearing, and especially because if your cue comes from another instrument or voice part, you can't always hear them even if it seems like you should.

If we suddenly lost the conductor as a choir, I think we also could finish the piece, and it might not be super noticeable to the audience, but the choir would probably notice that we didn't hit some things so well.
posted by nakedmolerats at 8:56 AM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Since the question has pretty much been answered, I'll share my story as a completely non-professional musician.

In high school we played "A Christmas Festival" by Leroy Anderson (well, the concert band arrangement, we didn't have strings). We played it EVERY year. When we played the concert at the elementary schools, our director (luv you Mr. Chamberlain) would pretend to fall apart. We, the band, would follow. This happened 2 or 3 times. Finally Mr. C would pick a kid out of the audience to be our director. Mr. C would count out 4 beats and we'd start playing. And, of course, we did amazingly good with the kid at the helm. It's one of my favorite memories from high school.

I actually heard the band play or played that piece in concert at least 50 times. I heard it in elementary and middle school and played it my 4 years in high school. And then listened to it the next 8 years as my two brothers went through the band.
posted by kathrynm at 9:09 AM on August 26, 2019 [6 favorites]

Fwiw, string quartets don't have conductors and it works out just fine. When I was played in them, we would all breathe together to start and it was kind of magical. There was also a lot of eye contact and the first violinist might bob the neck of their violin to indicate tempo. Everyone communicates through eye contact and body language that's particular to playing music together. Again, magic.
posted by purple_bird at 9:24 AM on August 26, 2019

The first general director of San Francisco Opera died while conducting a concert. The concert did not continue.
posted by mollymayhem at 9:45 AM on August 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

Some of this very much depends on the piece. For something that more or less chugs along (think Vivaldi's Four Seasons) this could absolutely be done and it would be just fine. Indeed, there was no such thing as a conductor in the modern sense when many of these pieces premiered. For an orchestral piece that has a lot of rubato and tempo variations that are not led by a soloist, not so much. You need someone to cue those changes and keep everyone together.
posted by slkinsey at 10:36 AM on August 26, 2019

The Bernstein memorial performance was no fluke. He trained them to play as he desired without his input, as he would occasionally show off by conducting with only facial expressions.

Each time this came up around someone who had played in an orchestra, I'd always hear something like "Yeah, all the real conducting is done during rehearsal. We all take tempo from other cues in the ensemble during performance mostly anyway."
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:29 PM on August 26, 2019

At its premiere, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was poorly received by the public, because Beethoven had conducted it, and Beethoven had gone deaf by then. The orchestra could probably have done a better job on their own.

This is not really an accurate account of what happened; there is quite a lot of primary source material on the premiere of the Ninth.

It was well understood that Beethoven was deaf as a post by this point, so an arrangement was devised where Beethoven would be on stage waving his arms around, but another conductor would be just in front of him doing the actual job.

This was fairly clearly necessary, given that at the end of the final movement, as the audience stood up to clap, Beethoven was several measures off and still conducting. Caroline Unger had to go up and turn him around to see the audience applauding.

In short, it was an instance of category #2 from range's comment:

2) you should make this conductor *feel* like they are being followed while you fix a bunch of things for them

The shortcomings of the performance have been generally attributed to a shortage of rehearsal rather than issues with the conducting.
posted by automatronic at 3:25 PM on August 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

I have sung in large choirs that stand behind and above the orchestra, on stage. I agree that the further apart the furthest performers are from each other is the trickiest part. Acoustics can be very weird on stage since the point of performance spaces is to get good sound out to the audience.

Agree. The speed of sound is about 340 metres per second. Where group of musicians are sufficiently large and/or spatially dispersed then having a conductor who can give visual cues to the beat is essential to keeping everybody together. And the conductor needs to be visually obvious enough for musicians to see wherever they are - so having a "rank and file" musician do the job will not always work. In a standard classical music concert hall - this is not so important - but for large orchestras with choirs and dancers - it can become an important factor. I've played in some large samba school performances where there are hundreds of musicians and dancers strung out over a (moving) football pitch sized area. Under these circumstances, the visual cues of a conductor are essential to keeping everything together.
posted by rongorongo at 10:50 PM on August 26, 2019

It's not quite the same thing in many ways, but at least once during my middle-school band days we played through a concert piece in the rehearsal room without the conductor. What made it work was that the piece was a march which was a lot of fun to play (so no tempo changes and relatively few dynamics changes) and we were about three days away from performance, so we'd been working on the piece for a couple of months. The director just sat in his office through the whole thing, then came out with a big smile on his face and wondered if his presence was really necessary.
posted by lhauser at 5:32 AM on August 27, 2019